Psychiatry and psychopharmacotherapy in Post-Soviet space

The Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago. Split and unified health system, medical care, including mental health. Before psychiatrists newly formed states one question: which way to go, what new model of care to choose, how to overcome the stigma and how to use the latest methods of prevention and treatment of mental illness? All these years, the country’s accumulated experience, positive and negative, and now is the time to compare it with the experience of their colleagues and neighbors to share their results, analyze what has been achieved and what could not be done. To this end, together with the Presidents of the National psychiatric societies of the former Soviet Union, we conduct a series of symposia and conferences of psychiatrists in these countries, and not in a narrow circle, and taking out our problems on the discussion of representatives of the world of psychiatry: the structure of services, training issues, stigma, research, prevention and treatment of mental illness. Today’s symposium is one in the series and we are grateful to our Turkish colleagues for the opportunity to spend it on this hospitable land. 25 years ago we did not have significant experience in combating drug abuse (the Soviet Union was a closed country), now we, unfortunately, there is something to discuss. There are other important new issues: the effects of PTSD, mental manifestations of AIDS, gambling, etc. Increasingly in our field of psychologists, neurologists “rob” in our epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. We replaced gradually comes a new generation of young psychiatrists: they are armed with the latest technology, they know foreign languages and is easy to establish professional contacts with their peers from other countries, carry out joint research is a new phenomenon in recent years in the former Soviet space. And today we present to your court those issues that affect the representatives of the participating countries of this symposium: Professor A.Altynbekov talk about the changes in mental health services in Kazakhstan, professor N.Hodzhaeva from Uzbekistan share the experience of the effects of treatment of heroin addiction, a professor T.Galako from Kyrgyzstan talk about the irrational use of psychotropic drugs and, finally, Dr. G.Geleyshvili will try to answer the question of whether drug companies to promote health care reform in Georgia. Dr. D.Smirnova (Russia), President of the Young Psychiatrists Council of Asia, will talk about the issues that concern the new generation of professionals starting their academic careers.